Marine Le Pen during the appeal trial of the European parliamentary assistants of the Front national in Paris, January 21, 2026. SERGIO AQUINDO FOR LE MONDE
Marine Le Pen concluded her 13-hour marathon hearings, held on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a level of energy that must have impressed her lieutenant, Jordan Bardella. The three-time presidential candidate answered the court's questions with ease, at times evasively, on the sixth day of the appeal trial over her party's suspected fake jobs at the European Parliament. While she made few concessions on the substance, she no longer contested the legal proceedings on the grounds of the separation of powers, and even cautiously said she was "willing to acknowledge" that an offense may have been committed and, above all, that some of her party's European Parliament assistants might have "in a residual way" worked for the party in France.
This was a significant shift for Le Pen, after a 10-year investigation and a trial that led to her being sentenced, on March 31, 2025, to four years in prison, with two years suspended, and a five-year ban on holding elected office. For the appeals court, however, it was minor, as Le Pen still maintained that she had never organized a scheme to siphon off European Parliament funds for her party, and insisted that she had never either transferred or chosen MEPs' assistants. As for the rest, she claimed not to have known, and repeatedly stressed her "good faith."
